St. Gabriel School plans alternative trip after Discovery Tours fiasco

St. Gabriel School in Concord Township, with the help of donations from a corporate sponsor, the school’s Parent Teachers United and private donors, has put together an alternative trip for the eighth-grade class.

St. Gabriel was one of many schools throughout the state whose eighth-grade trips were canceled as a result of Discovery Tours’ failure to follow through on payments and reservations for the trips prior to filing bankruptcy.

St. Gabriel is one of smaller private schools in the area without the support of a school board, according to parent volunteer Katy Moran. That resulted in the school not having much of a backup plan in place after the Discovery Tours turmoil, .

The school was not taking a trip to Washington, D.C., like some of the other schools, but instead opted again to do two separate days trips as it has done for the past two years.

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According to Moran, they found the day trips to be more successful and safer for the students.

The original journey planned through Discovery Tours was to include a day trip to Cleveland on May 30. The students were going to be granted access to several things one wouldn’t normally have access to, Moran said. There was supposed to be an underground subway tour, a tour of Progressive Field, a lunch cruise on the Nautica Queen, a tour of the vault at The Nines and stop for dinner at Little Italy.

“Come to find out, not only did the tour company go bankrupt, but also many, if not all, of those reservations did not even exist,” Moran said. “The only one that we were able to recover reservation-wise was the lunch cruise on the Nautica Queen,” Moran said.

According to Moran, there was a reservation available that the cruise operator would honor if the school could come up with the money for it.

Moran said they called Progressive Field to see if the tour was available and were told that since the Indians had a game at 1:10 p.m. on that date, they would have never honored a tour on a game day.

“According to our contact, the underground subway tour doesn’t exist anymore and our contact also told that the tour of the vault at The Nines was not available to children under the age of 18 and they only do tours after 4 p.m., so that never would have existed either,” she said.

The second excursion planned for May 31 by Discovery Tours was supposed to be a day trip to Niagara Falls, New York. Because of the expensive cost of busing, the school opted to cancel the trip because they didn’t want to go back and ask the parents to pay again, not knowing if they would be reimbursed by Discovery Tours.

JKL Tours helped the school come up with an itinerary to Put-in-Bay that would be a lot more affordable.

“There was a $600 deposit made to Precious Cargo that they were still willing to honor if we could come up with the rest of the money for the busing to get the kids there,” Moran said.

The trip to Put-in-Bay has a lot more free things to do, such as Perry’s Monument, and things like that to make the trip more affordable, she said.

A fundraiser is in the works and emails went out to the parish community, soliciting free-will donations to raise the funds.

Pat O’Brien Chevrolet paid the rest of the money that was due for the Nautica Queen cruise so the school could keep the reservation for that.

Moran did not know how much the donation was.

The school figured there would be 56 students and six chaperones on the trips.

They are looking at a package presented by JKL Tours, which doesn’t include lunch, figuring a price of about $50 per person for the day at Put-in-Bay. The cost of the busing originally was $2,100. With the credit of the $600 deposit, the school still needed $1,500 to cover the remainder of the cost. They were quoted an additional $5.75 a person for lunch at a restaurant at Put-in-Bay.

According to Alicia Henrikson, public relations person for St. Gabriel School, the school received many private donations so they have all the costs covered going forward.

Additionally, there was money not sent to Discovery Tours that they were able to apply to the cost of the alternative trip.